Journal of Academic Writing Mar 2015 OA PDF

An Analysis of the Citation Practices of Undergraduate Spanish Students

María José Luzón Universidad de Zaragoza

Abstract

One basic skill of academic writers is to be able to locate their claims within a disciplinary framework. However, undergraduate students find it difficult to integrate sources into their own writing successfully, which often results in inappropriate textual borrowing and poor referencing. The aim of the research reported here was to identify problematic or inappropriate use of sources in texts produced by undergraduate Spanish students and examine the reasons for these unacceptable citation practices. For this purpose, I analyzed a learner corpus consisting of 35 literature reviews written by students of an EAP subject in the third year of a Bachelor's Degree in English Studies. The results suggest that their inappropriate use of sources arises mainly from three factors: (i) an unawareness of the dialogic nature of academic texts and of the functions of citation in these texts; (ii) low linguistic level and low level of academic literacy regarding the procedures involved in paraphrasing and synthesizing; (iii) lack of familiarity with the language of citations.

Journal
Journal of Academic Writing
Published
2015-03-01
DOI
10.18552/joaw.v5i1.158
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
OA PDF Diamond
Topics
graduate education literacy studies
Export
BibTeX RIS

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

CrossRef global citation count: 11 View in citation network → Build reading path →

Related Articles

  1. Composition Forum Oct 2025
    Collaborative and Equitable Assessment: Graduate Student Responses to Co-Creating Feedback Guidelines in a Graduate Composition Pedagogy Course ↗
    writing pedagogy graduate education teacher development collaborative writing assessment literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies editorial matter
  2. Composition Forum Oct 2025
    Lab Notes as Disciplinary Literacy: Developing an Integrated, Genre-Based Writing Curriculum in a First-Year Engineering Physics Program ↗
    genre theory graduate education literacy studies
  3. Pedagogy Oct 2025
    Contributors ↗
    modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory cultural rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy advanced composition creative writing writing across the curriculum graduate education two-year college service learning teacher development technical communication professional writing labor and working conditions archival research multimodality artificial intelligence literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies literary studies editorial matter
  4. Journal of Academic Writing Sep 2025
    Booksprints as a Learning Format for Students in Higher Education ↗
    Anja Voigt-Färber
    writing across the curriculum graduate education teacher development digital rhetoric literacy studies
  5. The Peer Review Sep 2025
    The Impact of Working at a Writing Center in Brazil: Perspectives of Student Tutors ↗
    Ana Raquel Fialho Ferreira Campos; João Tiago Gaspar Cozechen; Elaine Pereira Lustosa; Marcos Angel De Carvalho Eing; Leonardo Schimiloski
    first-year composition writing pedagogy graduate education argument writing centers professional writing qualitative research artificial intelligence multilingual writers literacy studies race and writing